Open Throat

I've never eaten a person but today I might . . . A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign, overlooking the city that humans call ‘ellay'. Lonely and fascinated by humanity's foibles, the lion spends their days grappling with the complexities of their own identity, and ultimately the question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?

Henry Hoke is the author of the memoir Sticker, The Book of Endless Sleepovers, the story collection Genevieves, and the novel The Groundhog Forever. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Triangle House, The Offing, and the Catapult anthology Tiny Crimes. He holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for five years, and presently teaches at the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop and lives in Brooklyn.